Fatal Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Time was crawling by. To keep everything completely objective and unimpeachable, she had turned the Emmons examination over to J.T. and a team that was unlikely to miss the smallest hair or fiber on the slate-white tissues of the body.

  And so she had gone home.

  How she now missed Alan.

  Would she soon be missing J.T.?

  She felt alone in her comforting little world, snuggled deeply into the cushions of her soft, beige couch, staring up at the walls, the silence, taunting time and memory, beating out a rhythm not unlike that of her saddened heart. It was not just her loneliness that was poisoning her homecoming, but her fear. She realized now that all this time, since she had recovered from the attack on her by Matisak, O'Rourke had played on her weaknesses and Jessica had become afraid not only of her own decisions but those of others, and of O'Rourke's in particular. O'Rourke held sway over her and had been trying to use her like a dangling marionette first here and then there. It had been O'Rourke who pushed her into taking the Claw case, and she had manipulated her to the interviews with Matisak long before this, and urged her into Gerald Ray Sims' cell, all the time knowing what it must be doing to her, eroding away her mental stability, washing away her strength.

  And like a weak and bullied kitten, Jessica had allowed this to continue. No wonder J.T. seemed so estranged. J.T. didn't know her anymore, didn't recognize her, because she had changed long before J.T. had. The tragic effect was that their relationship had also been eroding away. She wondered if it could yet be saved.

  In the past, J.T. would never have doubted her actions; in fact, he had always been her chief advocate and champion. The memories flooded in. Cheering her, J.T. was always there to dig in and learn from her actions, to become a principal player in her sometimes dubious attacks and feints, never quite fully apprised of her motivations, and yet trusting her on faith alone, the way Alan Rychman had come to trust her, she thought. John Thorpe had never questioned her ability as a super-sleuth M.E. who worked hard to please the memory of her father.

  But she had let J.T. down somewhere along the way. She had let herself down, and the wolves were waiting on the periphery of her waning strength, prepared to tear her apart. And J.T.? Was he among them?

  Theresa O'Rourke was her division head now, and Jessica must answer to her, must work with her instead of around her as she had in the past, but she must first face her down, show the woman what she was made of. Until now O'Rourke had only known the wounded Jessica Coran. It might take some doing, and the confrontation might end in her dismissal, but on her way out, she would see that J.T. got her position. No one was more qualified.

  Another full day at the lab had netted her nothing, and now Jessica had returned home where her thoughts wandered back to New York City, to Alan Rychman. Alan had calmed down later that night of their last evening together and had allowed her to speculate on the possibilities, had held her and had comforted and counseled her. In light of there being no evidence, he had likely been humoring her when he said he would continue to investigate, to locate the shadowy Casadessus, and to try to link him with Archer, as they were both medical men. Had it just been Alan's way of soothing her, his way of leading her back into bed?

  She covered her eyes now with both hands and recalled every sumptuous moment of their lovemaking; they were good together, good for each other, too.

  Alan was gentle with her, his touch so light, at odds with his size and the hardness of his body and muscles. But she knew she could not depend on him—or any man, for that matter. In the end, she knew that her full recovery from the fear and suffering the Matisaks of the world had caused her would come only through her own hard-fought, inner battle with the demons residing deep within.

  Unable to sleep, she wondered if she ought not to return to the lab, if it hadn't been a mistake to leave Emmons' body in J.T.'s hands; if she shouldn't be there overseeing his every move. In her absence from Quantico, it seemed that J.T. and O'Rourke had found a little too much common ground for her liking.

  She sat up and checked the blinking, light-emitting diode signal coming from her alarm clock. The patterns went on and off at 11:07.51, 11:07.52, 11:07.53. Time was in slow motion, she thought.

  Unable to stand things as they were a moment longer, she got up, stumbled in the dark and found a pair of jeans in the closet and pulled a sweatshirt on, forgoing a bra. She found her shoulder holster, thinking that since the range was open all night, she might go there instead of the lab. Over the gun she placed a light jacket with the insignia of the Washington Redskins on it. Uncertain of her destination at the moment, she nonetheless rang for a cab. She then grabbed up her cane and her keys and was out the door.

  On the street outside the lobby doors to her condo complex, she beat out a rhythm on the sidewalk with her cane, a little angry at herself for slipping backward again, allowing sleeplessness its way with her. At least, she told herself, she wasn't on any pills anymore, and she wasn't drinking heavily as in the early days of her battle with the shadows that came in on all sides, turning even her spacious haven upstairs into a claustrophobic vise.

  If shadows were without substance, then how did they crawl up from out of her psyche to do a lurid dance along the walls? How could they take shape and stand and stare back at her? Dr. Lemont said she had to stare her fears down. When Alan was near, the phantoms had let her be, afraid to show themselves to another human being—or maybe just afraid of Alan! Now that he was no longer near, they'd slinked back on stealth feet: all her self-doubt, her remorse over Otto's death, her guilt and shame.

  She was relieved to see the taxi's lights when it pulled into view. When she got into the cab she knew where she wanted to be, a well-lit place with others around her.

  “Quantico gates, please,” she told the cabbie, who grunted in response.

  After a moment, he said, “Whataya do out there?”

  “I'm a doctor,” she told him.

  “Oh, yeah? That must be in-ner-resting work.”

  She said no more, thinking of J.T. instead. She wondered why he hadn't telephoned with something. The old J.T. would have.

  As the cab pulled from the curb, the cabbie caught a rear-view glimpse of someone who'd stepped from the shadows.

  He said in a smoker's rasp, “You was alone, wasn't you?”

  “What?”

  “A single fare?”

  “You see anyone with me?”

  “No, no... Sorry, Doctor.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Simon Archer had arrived in Quantico, Virginia, very early that morning.

  Casadessus wouldn't leave Archer alone about Jessica Coran; he would not let Archer sleep. Days had gone by in which he had fought the influential force within him that kept saying over and over that he must have her, must see Jessica Coran's insides turned out, must feed on her. Casadessus' appetite for the more youthful and powerful was not surprising. Casadessus believed that by feeding on the physical energies of others, by feeding on organs such as the heart, that Archer simultaneously fed on the psychic energy of his victims, thereby making him stronger. Of all the hundreds involved on the case of the Claw only she had an inkling of what had actually occurred, and it stood to reason that only she, now with Emmons' body under her full control, might someday show others that she was right: that Simon Archer was the Claw.

  He had carefully arranged to leave New York without anyone's knowing, booking his flight under the name of Ernest Casadessus, the name belonging to his grandfather, a man who took delight in beating, torturing and biting his own children, if his mother's rendition of her upbringing could be be-lieved.

  His work in Quantico, Virginia, must be swift and sure, he knew, and he must be back in New York on Monday, at the office, as if nothing had happened. So far, he had had no trouble either at the airport or at Quantico, where he had successfully taken the tour of the grounds and had learned the whereabouts of Dr. Coran's office and labs. He followed this with phone calls asking about her whereabouts and how
he could get in touch with her, careful never to leave a message, but always making it sound urgent.

  He had learned that the Emmons autopsy by the FBI was going on tonight, but he had been stymied when he learned that Dr. Coran wasn't among the doctors doing the final autopsy. She could be the only one capable of interpreting errant fibers or other clues of minutia he may have inadvertently left on the body, so he resumed stalking the FBI woman.

  Before the rather superficial tour of Quantico ended, he had located a safe place into which he stepped and disappeared. He had waited for hours, very patiently, for the right moment, when a security guard came toward the door where he stood on the opposite side, inside a stairwell.

  He grabbed the man quickly and surely, driving the needle into the man's chest like a spoke in a hurricane. The man's body went instantly limp, his eyes alone moving, searching for some reasoning in Archer's eyes, but only Casadessus' bottomless eyes were looking back.

  Casadessus wanted very much to take the man's eyes and feed on them, but Archer argued with him, saying that it would undermine the larger goal. He had such a finely tuned plan in mind for Coran that nothing, not even his own appetites, must get in the way. It would be exquisite, poetic even; even the poet, Leon/Ovid, would appreciate it when he read about it in the papers.

  Archer quickly stripped the security guard and replaced his own clothes with those of the guard. He acquired the guard's gun, badge and identification. Carefully he scooped up his other clothes and placed everything, including the guard's brown-bag lunch, in a cloth handbag he had earlier folded and stuffed under his shirt. He dragged the dead man's naked carcass to the concrete cave just below the steps, dumped it there and strolled out of the stairwell.

  He was careful to keep to this floor of the building, staring out a full-length window at the security vehicles below. He then took his time, learning as much as he could about the security in the building, the alarm systems and where the keys to the vehicles were kept. After he finished with Dr. Coran, he must get quickly to the airport.

  And so he haunted the halls with great care and caution. At the central switchboard was another security man. For a moment they stared at one another, the black security guard asking him what section he was from.

  “Subbing, just temporary assignment,” he muttered as he lifted his bag in one hand, the needle in the other, and jabbed the guard with the paralyzing, killing snake serum. He quickly dragged the body through a stairwell door and deposited it in a utility closet. He returned to the panel and looked everywhere for a list of telephone numbers. Finally he found one with Jessica Coran's name on it.

  He quickly dialed and it rang without answer until an answering machine beeped on and her recorded voice began giving him instructions. He didn't know what to do. If he left a message, they'd have his voiceprint; if he didn't leave a message, she might not come within his grasp, and time was of the essence. .

  He hung up, trying to think. Could she have already entered the building?

  He dug through the signatures of people coming and going through this area, his eyes scanning for her name. There it was. While he was upstairs, she had entered the building. The time she signed in read 11:47 P.M. His heart raced. She was here, very close, within his grasp.

  She must be in her lab, must be poring over the autopsy results on Emmons, must be digging for the single thread of evidence that would lead back to him. But it wasn't about to happen that way. Dr. Coran was in for a great shock.

  Archer carried with him another hypodermic. Meant to incapacitate rather than kill, the drug would effectively paralyze her. She'd stiffen and her eyes would be frozen open long enough to watch him torture her body, to take what he wanted. But not here. It would be done far from here, and the trademark of the killer that now would be stalking D.C. would be very different from the Claw who terrorized New York. The weapon he'd devised was every bit as deadly as the claw, and of far more precision. It utilized a scalpel that fit over the hand, razor-sharp and deadly, but it would leave an entirely different marking than the claw's three-pronged ruptures.

  The body would be discovered on the street, perhaps pinned to a chain-link fence just outside the darkened interior he had found earlier in the day. He had done it all this time without any help from the bungling Ovid. He didn't need Ovid. All he needed was Casadessus.

  He went for the elevator, which opened on a number of tired faces, none of whom seemed to pay him any attention as they made for the register and signed out of the building. They were talking about finding a night spot for drinks, but one moaned he was far too tired after the grueling day they'd had. The others tried to get this one, called J.T., to join them, but he remained steadfast, saying, “Dr. Coran'11 be expecting me at the crack of dawn.”

  “You let her run your life, too?” asked another.

  “Hey, why not?” asked another.

  “Imagine her with that cane beating your—”

  “Knock it off!” shouted the one called J.T., who looked up at the guard who'd remained near the elevators, saying, “Where's Tuttle tonight?”

  “Wasn't feeling well,” said Archer flatly.

  “Hmmmmm. Well, g'night.”

  Archer stood in the hallway on the floor where Dr. Coran's lab was located when he saw a door opening ahead of him. He dropped back into a parallel hallway. All around him were glass partitions through which he saw laboratories. Given the fact it was so late and that it was Labor Day weekend, the place was nearly deserted. Still, the lights over various lab tables confirmed that there were some people yet in the building.

  But where was Jessica Coran?

  Then he heard her, or rather he heard her cane as it tapped out a singular chorus to him. She was approaching from the door that'd burst open, sending him hiding. She was coming straight toward him: tap, tap, tap... coming for the elevators, no doubt. He readied his hypodermic and listened as she approached. Closer and closer, tap, tap, tap...

  He was acutely aware that the hallway corridor formed a complete square at the center of which were elevators on both sides.

  When she was within inches, he lurched from around the corner and stabbed her full in the chest with the hypodermic, but it wasn't her. It was an elderly man in a white lab coat who now stood clutching at his heart, certain he had been killed by a madman, going to his knees, his cane skittering away, clattering against the floor.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Archer moaned where he stood over the fallen old man, whose eyes had rolled back in his head, the whites staring up at Archer without seeing him. But somewhere he felt eyes upon him and when he turned back, he saw her. Dr. Coran was several offices away from the incident in the hallway, but through the panes of glass through which she had watched, she saw a poorly disguised Dr. Simon Archer attack her serologist, Dr. Robertson. Her eyes told him that she knew that he had come for her.

  For a moment they simply stared at one another, hunter and hunted. Then she revealed to him that she had a gun. Pointing it, aiming it at Archer and firing, she burst the three panes of glass between them, but Archer had disappeared. She could not tell if she had hit him or not, but drawing up her nerve, she rushed toward Steve Robertson's prone and still form. Archer had somehow escaped. She wheeled about with the gun extended, her white lab coat flapping about her legs, her cane tucked below her arm. She fought to keep balance, knowing her full weight on her ankles was not good, but she must be prepared to fire again if need be.

  She saw that the elevator was taking someone down, possibly Simon Archer being true to form—a coward when faced with a victim who fought back. Every victim of the Claw before now had been defenseless and taken by surprise.

  She knelt over Robertson, seeing blood on the floor beside him. She took his pulse and found it weak and erratic; searched frantically for a wound, fearing that flying glass had hit him. But there were no wounds. Robertson was unable to speak and quite possibly unable to hear. Paralyzed somehow by Archer, she knew that but for the grace of God it might well b
e her lying here paralyzed, in the complete and utter control of the Claw.

  “I hope you can hear me, Robertson... Robertson!” she called out to the injured man. “I'm calling 911. You're going to be all right. Just hang on!”

  She realized now that the blood beside Robertson was Archer's blood, that she had wounded him. She saw a trail of it leading in the direction of the elevators. She now pushed upward against her cane to regain her feet, but the cane slipped from beneath her when it found blood. She lay on her back when she saw a shadow dart across the hall down from her, going toward her office and lab. She held firmly to the gun, and hearing something metallic skitter away from her, she found an odd glove with a scalpel firmly attached to it: Archer's new weapon of choice. She placed it safely away— evidence for later.

  She wanted to hunt Archer down. Turn the tables on the sonofabitch, see him in the position of his victims, avenge Dr. Darius and all those other victims of the man's madness. One thing she did not want was to see this freak Archer incarcerated in Gabe Arnold's Philadelphia madhouse alongside Matisak. She wanted some modicum of justice this time around.

  Regaining her feet, she saw that the elevator she had thought to be going down was coming up. Was he aboard it, or had he taken refuge in the labs, hiding in wait there? She could not be certain. She waited for the elevator to arrive and for the doors to open, her gun extended, at the ready.

  The door opened on a stranger to her, his hands going up on seeing her gun pointed at his eyes. “Don't shoot,” he said.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Frakley, FBI, like you, Dr. Coran.” He flashed an ID and said, “I got a call from a Captain Alan Rychman, NYPD, about you. The captain was real worried, pressed us for a twenty-four-hour surveillance of your place.”

  “Why the hell wasn't I told?”